Jane Kaczmarek

Jane: Bradley works a lot harder than I do. Every week he has to memorize all those great lines. I just come to the set and yell at the kids and hang around the snack table. It's very relaxing.

Jane: Until I was finished with sixth grade, we grew up in a house in Milwaukee, with four kids and my mom and my dad. We had one bathroom, which is what the family in Malcolm has, which [we] never thought was odd. There was a toilet in the basement. You learned to really function very cooperatively with one toilet, and it just seemed like the most normal thing in the world. I love that that is the case on Malcolm, because I think a lot of people grew up that way.There's a certain familiarity about that.

Jane: I love watching [on TV] with a girlfriend and a glass of wine, cutting everybody down. Award shows are fun on TV. Being there, I have to tell you they are very, very long.

Jane: (About the 2000 Emmy Awards) First of all, I didn't have a ticket. I had hired a publicist, who never got my tickets. So we literally went running up there. We were late because we were talking to everyone on the red carpet. We went from door to door trying to get in, and finally someone with a headset said, 'Yeah, I have a lady here. She says she's a nominee. She doesn't have a ticket.' So, we got in and it had already started. I was both physically and emotionally uncomfortable. I had just bought a girdle from Sears - that's the only place you can get a good girdle anymore - and it was killing me. I went to the bathroom, and you can't get back in till the next commercial, which I didn't know. It's bizarre because you can hear stuff going on in there, but they won't open the door. It was an odd evening. You're surrounded by people you don't know, and you don't know quite what to do.

Jane: (About her acting career before Malcolm In The Middle) I couldn't even get auditions for comedies. I played very unfunny people.

Jane: (On her charity Clothes Off Our Back) Mike Farrell [M*A*S*H] told me that you have a certain 'currency' when you become a celebrity and that it's up to you as to how you're going to spend it. The first year, we sold Jennifer Aniston's Emmy dress for $50,000, which allowed 50,000 children to be immunized against measles. It's opened so many doors for me to say to people, 'Hello, can I have your shoes and your dress?'

Jane: Student teaching is the hardest job there is. Secondary school kids didn't want to be there. I skipped out one afternoon and went to the mall, and there were some of my students there. But they couldn't report me, could they?

Jane: Look, you can get yourself cut and stitched, or you can get a good girdle. The day before my first Emmy show, I went to Sears and bought a really good girdle. And I've worn that thing to every single awards show since!

Jane: If a stove like this was good enough for 50's moms, who made three meals a day, then it's good enough for me!

Jane: I hate cooking, so my only concern was fitting a turkey in it on Thanksgiving and I can.

Jane: Lois is a great mother. They can't afford any help so she takes care of the kids along with working. They have dinner together every night. Those kids don't get away with anything.